Redmond Gallagher:Redmond Gallagher, or "Red" to his friends, led a long, varied and successful life. He will, perhaps, best be remembered in Ireland for his association with Urney Chocolates and for his exploits in the field of motor racing. Redmond contributed greatly to the development of industry and agriculture in postwar Ireland.
He was a former chairman of the Pigs and Bacon Commission and a former director of Irish Shipping Limited, Córas Tráchtála and Arklow Pottery. He was also involved in the early days of the Kilkenny Design project. As well as farming extensively, he developed Urney Chocolates into a major producer, employer and exporter. In the 1960s, Urneys employed almost 1,000 people.
A true renaissance man, he was possessed of an endlessly inquiring mind and was well-versed on a wide variety of subjects. He was a voracious reader, particularly of historical works, among which Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Jan Morris's Pax Britannica trilogy were favourites.
Although he enjoyed great success and wealth, Redmond shunned everything and everybody that was pretentious, and he displayed his sophistication and style with a very light and human touch.
Redmond was born in 1914 in Dunwiley, near Stranorlar in Co Donegal. His father, Harry, was Crown Solicitor for Donegal (although he was an ardent nationalist) and also had a private law practice. His mother was Eileen Cullen from Co Wexford.
In 1918 his parents bought an old rectory, Urney House, together with a small farm, between Strabane and the village of Clady, straddling the Border. His mother started making jam with the fruit produced by the farm. Postwar rationing meant sugar was in short supply for making jam but could be bought for making confectionery. She therefore began to make sweets in the basement of the house, and Urney Chocolates was born.
The business grew quickly and, following partition, they decided to move production to the South. They secured a site in Tallaght, near Dublin, in 1924 from a choice of four ex-RAF camps offered by the government, which was keen to assist new businesses. From then until the business was sold in the 1960s, it grew to be a substantial enterprise, with export markets in the US, Canada, Britain, the Far East, Australia and Scandinavia.
Redmond spent most of his school years in Dublin, notably in Belvedere College, where his principal pleasure was rugby (he was the captain of the team that won the Leinster Schools Junior Cup in 1929). After leaving school, he spent some time working in the Urney factory before going to Germany in 1934 for work experience in factories. This was Adolf Hitler's first year in power and, at an industry fair in Leipzig he was introduced to the dictator as he did the rounds.
Redmond developed a love of motor sport at an early age. When he was 15, he secured a job as a steward at the Irish Grand Prix held on a circuit in Phoenix Park. While in Germany, he went to the Arhus motor racing circuit in Berlin that featured the Hitler-inspired and subsidised Mercedes and Auto Union Porsches. In the 1930s he owned a three-litre Sunbeam that had been brought to Ireland by Sir Malcolm Campbell.
After the war, Redmond raced a series of cars (the Leprechaun), which he constructed with friend (and chief engineer at the Urney factory), Nicolas Flynn. Leprechaun 3 was the most successful, winning many speed events. Keen to take part in longer races, he bought a 1.5 litre Gordini, which he entered in races all over Ireland, as well as in England and in Le Mans. It had two wins in the international tourist trophy at Dundrod, near Belfast, and another in the Wakefield trophy at the Curragh.
In the 1950s, he acquired extensive lands in the southern Slob wetlands in Wexford. He transformed it from a marsh only fit for wild fowl into a productive farm - a process that involved installing many miles of drainage. He erected a grass-drying plant that turned out thousands of tons of grass pellets annually.
When the price of oil rose and he was unable to dry grass economically any more, he switched to cereal production. Through all of this, Redmond ensured that the wildlife continued to thrive.
In the late 1960s, Redmond decided to expand into the world of stud farming, and acquired Ballygoran Stud near Maynooth. This venture proved very stimulating for Redmond but, he admitted himself, was not one of his greatest financial successes.
In 1978, he settled near Denia on the east coast of Spain, where he lived for the remainder of his life. His final 16 years were spent very happily in a spacious villa in the small inland town of Sagra with his third wife, Máirín. There they enjoyed extending hospitality to their many visiting friends from Ireland and elsewhere, and Redmond had sufficient land to become involved again, albeit to a modest scale, in agricultural production (oranges).
In 2002, Redmond and Máirín were instrumental in arranging the twinning of Sagra with the town of Kilbrittain in Cork. Schoolchildren from both towns have travelled back and forth on exchange trips, gaining valuable knowledge of their different cultures and languages.
Also in 2002, on the occasion of his 90th birthday and in recognition of his and his wife's contribution to its community, Redmond was made an honorary son of the town of Sagra in a ceremony presided over by the mayor.
Redmond died peacefully at home, aged 92. Twice a widower, he was also pre-deceased by his brother Edward and his sister Helen. He is survived by his third wife, Máirín, and by a son, David, and a daughter, Sally, by his first wife Audrey (Kewley). He is also survived by a stepson, Patrick Headon, and a stepdaughter, Mary McGrath, children of Redmond's second marriage, to Betty Headon (nee Fitzgerald).
Redmond Gallagher: Born, February 27th, 1914; died October 31st, 2006